


Six Words

by phoenixflyinghigh



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Christmas Monster, Derek Gets Therapy, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Suicidal Thoughts, Therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 11:23:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8888944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoenixflyinghigh/pseuds/phoenixflyinghigh
Summary: “I want to see each of you attempt to equate to the genius of Hemingway!  Explain the apparently most complex thing, your lives, in as few words as possible!  Quite a challenge to you, eh Tilinski?”  Finstock centered his crazy-eyes on Stiles.
Wow, that would be easy, ‘fucked up to fuck up with werewolves’, Stiles thought sarcastically.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wildamongwolves](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wildamongwolves/gifts).



> The prompt I was given was basically "angst, hurt/comfort, post-nogitsune, with PTSD!Stiles", but the story kind of got a life of its own.
> 
> This is also my first attempt at writing anything creative after an 8-year break, so please be gentle.
> 
> Also, I also have PTSD so it was kind of therapeutic to write this.

Stiles hasn’t slept for two weeks. Well, that may not be true. There were some gaps where he hoped he had just been sleeping. Moments when he would come back to with the face of a teacher peering into his eyes. 

He wondered what they saw.  
This time Scott was trying to get his attention.

“Psst, dude, I think Coach is going to call on you next. Read the intro!” Scott tried and failed to whisper out of the side of his mouth.  
Stiles remembered a time when the roles were reversed, and he had to wake Scott from his Allison-generated stupor. Fuck, Allison, falling, the dark -- wait, suppress, suppress.  
The one thing you’re good at is not thinking, he thought to himself bitterly.

“Bilinski! Can you repeat to the class what the final project this year is? I’m sure it won’t be hard if you were actually listening, instead of daydreaming of whatever the youths like these days?” 

Stiles could see the spit flying onto Greenberg’s face.

“Um, well, uh, the thin-” Stiles tried to speak with his hands, in order to appease Finstock.

“Wrong! Greenberg, do you think you can outdo Mr. Stutter?”

“We have to write a six-word memoir about ourselves, just like Heminwheat.”

“So close, but yes! I want to see each of you attempt to equate to the genius of Hemingway! Explain the apparently most complex thing, your lives, in as few words as possible! Quite a challenge to you, eh Tilinski?” Finstock centered his crazy-eyes on Stiles.

Wow, that would be easy, ‘fucked up to fuck up with werewolves’, Stiles thought sarcastically.

The bell thankfully rang before Finstock could overwhelm another student, probably Greenberg, again.

“Well, that sounds like a super easy final, right buddy?” Scott had started treating Stiles like he was made of eggshells since the Nogitsune incident. But all it managed to do was remind Stiles of how much had changed.  
Stiles tried to paste a smile on his face, although it felt like his face was heated clay, unable to meld into another other than a tired husk, “Yea-”

“Pack meeting, after school. Derek just texted,” Isaac brushed past them, without a glance to either of them.  
\-----  
Stiles splashed some water on his face. He didn’t feel like his body was his own anymore. He wasn’t just afraid in his own house or room. He didn’t know if he was always alone in his skin. Sure counting helped, but he didn’t want to have to count on that for the rest of his life. What if it became smarter? 

Wait no, don’t think like that, Stiles shook his head of the water, it’s gone. It’s gone. It’s gone. He’s gone. Would he ever feel like he did before? But what counted in the before? Before he got Scott attacked?

The world would be better off if he never existed, he knew that now. He looked at the razor at the edge of the bathtub. Two deep cuts and he could finally feel peace. They’d probably be all happy. He knew that some of the betas couldn’t even look at him, especially Lydia. Especially Der-. 

No, that name hurt. He didn’t deserve to see that side of Derek, that vulnerableness, all because of him. But that wasn’t right, why would Derek feel that much about annoying, non-stop-talking Stiles?

He glanced at the razor again. No, he couldn’t do that to his dad. After everything, maybe the one thing he could do right by was his dad. Start all over again.

“Just be here with me. Please. Stiles!” Stiles gasped out of bed. 

It couldn’t be. He felt the water. He couldn’t. Stiles heard someone yelling in the distance. He could still feel the water. He could. Stiles felt like his ribs were an iron water tank, getting smaller and smaller. He couldn’t breathe.

“I’m here. I’m here. Please, Stiles.” Stiles heard his dad’s worn voice, almost like he had been repeating his name for hours.

“Dad?” Stiles whispered his throat raw, answering the question to where the screaming had been coming from.

He remembered getting that final assignment in English class. Although it ended with him answering Coach’s answer right and throwing up when Isaac couldn’t look him in the eyes.  
When would this stop? When would he be free?

His dad had started singing the lullaby that used to call his mom when she got into these types of episodes. Because it was true, he was turning into her, wasn’t he? His dad’s eyes lay above the deep, nest-life bags after holding Stiles back from drawing blood almost every night for the past five weeks. He couldn’t do this to him anymore.

“C’mon kid, let’s go downstairs and watch some infomercials with some of my famous pancakes.” The Sheriff smiled down at his kid, trying to lighten the mood even though all the evidence was still there. 

Stiles had recently started to scratch his face, his arms, anything he could reach in order to subconsciously claw out of his dreams.

“Yeah,” Stiles looked out in the distance, “yeah.”  
\-----  
It was about a week later, and Stiles had finally gathered all his courage to walk up to the apartment door. He had finally convinced his dad to take the night shift, citing an all-nighter for a history midterm.

Stiles held a fist over the door. This was a good decision, wasn’t it? Only Derek was the closest fucked up to his mess. Just ask if we can be fucked up together, that’s something old-Stiles would say.

Stiles closed his eyes and knocked his fist, just as the door opened to Derek’s passive face. It quickly turned to concerned, another mark on how much things have changed, Stiles thought bitterly. 

“Hey, big guy. I was thinking that you needed some company in the winter season. You know they say that seniors get the most lonely during Christmas time? I don’t know if it’s because all of their friends are gone and they notice it the most or they get too nostalgic. And since you’re the grumpiest old guy I know, here I am!” Stiles steamrolled through the door, trying to act more like his old self, namely annoying, “So, you doing anything this season - oh my god, what the fuck!”

Stiles flailed once he saw the elf on the windowsill, “What the fuck is that?!”

Derek strode over and patted the elf on the sill, “My dad used to get us into the Christmas spirit with one of these. So I got one. A new one.” 

Stiles side-eyed the elf on the shelf as he slowly crept to the other side of the room, slightly afraid the elf’s eyes would follow him to the guest room.  
\---  
Scott had mentioned earlier that Derek had bought a new apartment. Stiles was still super sleep deprived at the time, so he listened with cotton-filled ears about how suspiciously different Derek was acting after leaving the pack.

“He’s so calm about it, dude like he has a side pack just waiting for him that we don’t know about! AND he’s going to therapy! -”

Stiles shortly looked up in question, about to ask what was bad about therapy. He knew that Scott’s dad before he left, loved to talk down anyone with mental illnesses; which was the reason he avoided their house after getting diagnosed with ADHD when they were little.

“Dude I’m just saying he’s acting like a different person.”

After Scott left, Stiles thought about maybe they never really knew who Derek was. Maybe this was the first time the real Derek was coming out. In between his family dying, running halfway across the country, and dealing with other dead relatives, the stress probably transformed Derek into the sour, grumpy cat they were familiar with.  
\---  
Stiles saw that side of Derek later that week. Stiles’ anxiety was really amping up, in that he felt ashamed to go outside the guest room after barging into Derek’s home. Which was he felt like the elf peering at him from one of the drawers of the bureau across his bed felt like a peace offering.

Stiles stumbled into the kitchen half-asleep to see a soft, sleepy Derek he never saw before. He lifted his head in greeting with some drink with whipped cream in one hand and a dog-eared novel in the other. Stiles stared while making some fruity pebbles, spilling some rainbow kernels, eyeing the soft, olive sweater with thumbholes and the non-angry eyebrows (!). 

Stiles didn’t know the last he smiled for himself, but watching a hot Derek sip his hot drink, oblivious to the world made him believe in goodness in the world again. Surely if Derek went through such shit and came out like this on the other side, meant he could too. 

With newfound hope, Stiles crept back to his bed with a bowl of rainbow cereal. He wondered if the elf had always been on his bed, maybe his mind was just making stuff up again. He shook his head, maybe in the supernatural world, they just moved on their own?  
\---  
Stiles woke up with a scream on his lips. The worst part wasn’t the images of real memories running through his mind, it was the feeling that he was too dirty to be clean again. He felt like his heart and his insides were smeared with crude oil, and nothing could scrape it away. He panted, eyes closed, and made a fist against his chest. Quietly whimpering, he wondered if this cycle would ever stop, if he could ever go home and not wake up his dad with the screaming.  
Slowly he came back to earth and realized there was a heaviness on the other side of the queen bed. 

“Can I touch you?” A soft voice asked, waiting for Stiles’ nod.

A warm hand moved across his back as Stiles slowly stopped feeling like he was being choked by an invisible force. Once he got control of his breathing, he looked at the side of the bed, to see a disheveled Derek with concerned eyes look back. He looked so soft, so malleable.

“How did you get over it?” Stiles wiped some residual tears with his sleeve.

“Lots of therapy,” Derek chuckled grimly, “but the pain and dissociation never really leaves you. You can only change how you deal with life after. Start trusting people.”

“I don’t think that’s my problem, big guy. It’s more like getting everyone to trust myself, including me.”

“I trust you.” 

Stiles slowly raised his head from where he was fiddling with his damp, tear-soaked sleeves, “Well I guess that shows your track record with trusting people.”

Derek stiffened and stood up. He had the same guarded face Stiles remembered from the first day they met with all the ‘grr, my territory’ shit. 

Shit.  
\---  
A few days passed, each accompanied with nightmares. And every night Derek was there at the other side with concerned eyes, but no words. After a while, Stiles noticed a few of the dreams would have a pale elf with sharp teeth in the background. Stiles guessed that his fucked up mind now hated Christmas because his life sucked epically.

That is until one peaceful night. Derek and Stiles had started talking again once Stiles mustered up the little pride he had left to apologize for his rude outburst. They were making dinner together, moving around each other harmonically. Stiles would almost call it domestic, but he didn’t need some teenager crush getting in the way of connecting with the only other person he knew who could understand his pain.

“Stiles! This was funny the first few times, but I almost cut myself with a knife.“ Derek’s angry eyebrows were making another appearance, waving around the elf that had been in the cutlery drawer...wait.

“I thought you were moving it?” Stiles crept slowly from the elf in Derek’s hand, wondering when this demonic shit would leave him alone. Maybe he should apply to some colleges as far away from Beacon Hills as possible like Lydia. Florida man didn’t sound that bad right now, please Disney World, right?  
\---  
10 minutes later the now crowned “elf from satan” was trapped in a spare bird cage Derek had lying around. (Derek claimed for a while he was trying some new hobbies. Stiles didn’t know what kind of hobby included a bird cage, but all he could think of was Derek by the window singing Green Finch and Linnett Bird in a corset. Which wasn’t a bad image? A green corset would totally match Derek’s hazel eyes.)

Stiles shook his head, this was not a place or time for establishing spank material.  
He turned back to the computer, “This Christian website says the elf on the shelf is a minion of Satan.”

“Yeah, I kind of assumed it was something demonic,” Derek stared at the tomb with dead eyes whispering, “why me.”

“Where did you even get this elf, anyway? Hell?”

“No, I went to a supernatural store. The lady said that it was perfect for hexing in the holiday spirit, but I thought she was joking?”  
Stiles stared at Derek, “I can’t believe your one weakness is Christmas themed things,” shaking his head, “so are we going to just do this in Supernatural style? Oh wait, you’re a grandpa and don’t even own a TV.”  
\---  
A traumatic salt and burning later, in which Stiles did the burning alone with Derek escaping to make hot cocoa, they were huddled in their individual blanket cocoons in from of the humongous tree Derek had forced Stiles to pick out with him.

“You know, if you want I can get you a TV for Christmas.” Derek was making it his mission to keep his face resolute and staring straight at the tree.

“Oh, I didn’t realize I missed that sourwolf face!” Stiles teased, not expecting a lapful of werewolf in the next moment.

Stiles never knew what homoerotic play-wrestling would feel like, but apparently not popping a boner was out of the question.  
After a few cries of “human! Human!” Derek had Stiles pinned underneath him, asking darkly, “Am I still a sourwolf now, Stiles?”

Stiles let out a huff of air to serve as a laugh as he noticed how close Derek’s bunny teeth were to his teeth. God, why was he thinking about teeth? This was why he was single and a virgin. Fucking teeth.

Derek fell onto Stiles with a grunt during Stiles’ teeth thoughts, “Wow, real smooth, big guy.”

Derek’s ears turned a little red, “Can I kiss you?”

“Dude, of-fucking-course,” Stiles whispered, kind of out of the loop of what was happening right now.

In slow motion, Stiles saw Derek’s face coming closer. Derek’s lips felt so incredibly soft, and after a few moments, Stiles started reciprocating. Derek’s hands came up to rest beneath Stiles’ neck as the kiss got more heated. Derek’s lips pressed harder against his. And then the hottest thing ever happened when Derek softly bit Stiles’ bottom lips, making Stiles open his eyes to see Derek giving him the most come-hither look he had ever seen. Stiles wanted so much.

Once Derek’s leg came in between Stiles broke the kiss, “Um...would you hate me if I said that maybe we could just kiss for now? I know I’m like obviously a virgin and that should be fixed for supernatural reasons. And I just turned 18 but. I’m sorry I can’t -”

“Stiles. I would be more than happy to just kiss you right now.” 

Stiles looked up and felt warm just looking at Derek’s eyes. For the first time in a while, he felt safe.  
\---  
After a while, they moved to Derek’s bed, because of Derek’s old back Stiles insisted. One amazing make-out session later, they were cuddling (!) with Stiles laying his head on Derek’s shoulder with one hand splayed onto Derek’s stomach.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Stiles knew what Derek was asking, sitting up against the headboard.

“After - after the whole nogitsune thing, and during it I guess. Um. I haven’t really felt like my body belongs to me. I mean some...thing took control of my brain! And it controlled what I said and what I did, and it was like watching it underwater or a dream. I don’t really know what to do to feel like I have control over me again, you know? Maybe I should get therapy.” Stiles sighed looking down at his fidgeting hands,  
“But at this point, I’m not sure if I want to lose my virginity when I’m feeling like this, like maybe it could make me feel worse? And I know virginity is a construct, but it means something to me probably because it meant something to some of the bad supernatural people we know.” Stiles gulped, trying to feign nonchalance, “And I understand if that’s a deal breaker, but that’s me!”

Derek slowly sat up, “Stiles I totally understand what you mean. After some...things in my past, haven’t felt like my body was mine either. Especially after the torture. And if you want to get help, I’ll be with you every step of the way.” Derek looked Stiles in the eyes, taking one of his hands,

“You were some annoying, talkative kid that made me feel stuff again other than pain or depression. Mostly annoyance,” Derek’s eyes crinkled as he laughed at Stiles’ affronted face, “but also sometimes I felt like you cared about me. Which was different. You - you remind me a lot of Laura. Really spunky, won’t take shit, kind of an asshole…”

Derek caught the hand Stiles was using to try to mute him, “I felt kind of fucked up for feeling things for a teenage boy who always smelled of spunk, but now at least I know what you’re feeling, so maybe it’s all okay.”  
Derek sent a soft bunny-like smile towards Stiles, filling him up with fuzzy feelings, “So ready for kissing round two?”  
\---  
The weeks flew by. Derek drove Stiles to a therapist and held him afterward while Stiles tried to act that he wasn’t sobbing after facing his demons, literally. Stiles decided to move back in with his dad, now that he felt that he was working towards getting better. But Derek was so frequently at Stiles’, that the Sheriff made jokes that he had a second son now. Which then evolved to family dinners of three (which Stiles wouldn’t have believed could have gone more than civilly if told about that a year ago).

Stiles started to feel like a snake shedding his skin. He felt happy sometimes, and started liking doing his favorite things again, like murdering Scott at Call of Duty. The nightmares never fully went away, but he wasn’t screaming bloody murder as often. And he legitimately felt like everyone around him cared about him and were trying to help, not getting annoyed by his disability.  
Before he knew it, it was the day before he had to present his final. He was curled on Derek’s couch with a notebook in front of him, using Derek’s chest as a pillow.  
Suddenly it hit him.

“With support, not all broken.”  
\---  
(Of course, he wouldn’t actually present such a personal thing to Finstock of all people, so he just wrote “Fidgeting, with a pocket-full of circumcision”. He was sure Coach would get it).

**Author's Note:**

> My tumblr is thewizardofgays, go check me out! :)


End file.
